


Rainfall

by KCKenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dancing in the Rain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Obi-Wan Kenobi Gets a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Sad Obi-Wan Kenobi, Young Anakin Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KCKenobi/pseuds/KCKenobi
Summary: The first time Anakin sees rain, and the first time Obi-Wan dances in it.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 38
Kudos: 285





	Rainfall

Obi-Wan has started avoiding the mirror.

It’s like seeing a stranger—the stark absence of his Padawan braid, the odd length of his hair, the dullness of his eyes. As he turns off the faucet and dries his hands on a towel, he forces himself to face the reflection. To stare back at the person who greets him there.

A person he barely recognizes.

“Master!”

Obi-Wan cringes a little at the title that shouldn’t belong to him, but he straightens himself anyway. Tries to look normal. Opens the ‘fresher door.

The boy looks as though he’s been running—his cheeks are flushed and he’s panting lightly, his new tunic disheveled and stained with grease. He looks up at Obi-Wan and smiles.

But when Obi-Wan smiles back, it feels forced.

“Um, I thought you might want dinner,” Anakin says, his eyes suddenly skirting away. “I noticed you didn’t eat lunch. Or breakfast.”

Hadn’t he? Obi-Wan combs through his memory, and though it’s fuzzy, he supposes Anakin is probably right. But he hadn’t been hungry—he rarely is, anymore. What food he does manage to eat only makes him nauseous. His appetite seems to have abandoned him since—

Obi-Wan clears his throat. “Yes,” he says quietly. “Yes, dinner. Thank you, Padawan. Ah, shall I make us something, or would you rather eat in the refractory…?”

“I was thinking maybe we could, you know…go somewhere.” Anakin shifts on his feet, studying the pattern on the ‘fresher floor. “Not that I don’t love the Temple, ‘cause I _do_! But some of the other initiates were talking about their favorite places to eat here on Coruscant, and they asked me what mine was, but since I’ve never actually _been_ anywhere…anyway, I was wondering if you could maybe take me? But only if you’re not busy—"

For a brief moment, something warm fills Obi-Wan’s chest. The boy is too polite, too respectful, too…too _sweet_ , sometimes. And he’s right—Obi-Wan hasn’t been in the mindset to leave the Temple himself, much less to take Anakin with him. Perhaps…perhaps they _ought_ to do something. Pay Dex a visit, maybe. That could be alright.

Obi-Wan forces himself to smile. “Going somewhere for dinner sounds lovely. Just grab your cloak and we’ll be off.”

“Do I _have_ to? I hate cloaks. I always trip over them.”

Obi-Wan almost laughs to himself. So, perhaps the boy isn’t _too_ respectful, as he’d thought before.

“Fine, no cloak then,” he says. “But you’ll be missing the hood when everyone stares—even among Coruscant’s diverse population, Jedi tend to draw undue attention.”

“Please,” Anakin says, puffing out his chest. “Undue attention is my middle name.”

Then, Obi-Wan actually does laugh. The sound is small, and subdued. But it’s been so long since it’s happened at all that he finds himself bringing a hand to his mouth, stifling it in surprise.

Anakin disappears from the doorway, and Obi-Wan hears the skip of his footsteps trailing away. He starts to follow, then pauses, looking back.

In the mirror, his eyes are still dull. But perhaps, for a moment, not quite as hollow.

Outside, the air is heavy, filled with the promise of storms to come, but the wind is gentle and warm. On another night—in another lifetime—it might have been comfortable.

But here, in this one, it isn’t.

Because as Obi-Wan steps outside the Temple, it hits him—he hasn’t walked down these stairs since _before_. Since he and Qui-Gon would walk down them together, off to grab nerfburgers at Dex’s like he and Anakin are off to do now. Qui-Gon would tease him for walking so fast— _hungry, are we?_ —and Obi-Wan would tease him for walking so slow— _pick up the pace, old man_. Qui-Gon would shoot back about his endless appetite, about how Obi-Wan would eat his own cloaks if the quartermaster wasn’t already cross with him for losing them so often, and they’d sink comfortably into banter and laughter until silence overtook them, and then they’d sink comfortably into that, too.

Now, the absence of his Master at his side is suddenly so sharp that Obi-Wan stops walking. And there, at the top of the Temple stairs, he can do nothing but stare out into the dark and cloudy sky, and breathe, and remember.

Anakin has stopped walking beside him. With a flicker of lightening in the distance, his young eyes light up, and they’re worried.

“You’re sad again,” he says, and his voice is so gentle the wind nearly carries it away. “Well, you’re always a little sad. But now you’re sad even more.”

Obi-Wan tries to shake his head, but it feels forced. “I’m just a bit tired,” he says, “that’s all.”

He can see Anakin wanting to argue that point. His face grows as stormy as the thunder somewhere far off, but he doesn’t speak.

Obi-Wan tries to start forward. But suddenly he can’t bear the thought of taking another step—of facing these streets, these restaurants and alleys and homes of endless memory. Of facing them alone.

And so he feels himself about to disappoint the boy again. Feels himself about to say _maybe another night would be better. Maybe when it’s not about to storm, or…_

He swallows.

_Or when I’m not about to cry._

He’s thankful for the brief rumble of thunder—it gives him a moment to swallow, to inhale, to look away.

“Ani…”

But he doesn’t get to finish.

Because then the sky opens up, bathing them in rainfall.

Obi-Wan shelters himself automatically—before the first droplets of rain can even sink into his skin, he draws the Force up around him to keep dry. It’s one of the earliest tricks he’d learned as a youngling. One that… _blast._

One that he hasn’t yet gotten around to teaching Anakin.

“Padawan…Force forgive me, I never taught you how to—”

But Anakin isn’t looking at Obi-Wan. He isn’t looking down at his soaking wet clothing, or even at the lights of the endless city anymore.

He’s looking up into the storm clouds, his eyes electrified.

“Is this…” he says softly. “Is this _rain_?”

Obi-Wan blinks. “Yes, I—”

“THAT’S SO WIZARD!”

And then Anakin is tossing back his head and reaching up, as though he can touch the storm if he just reaches high enough, and laughing. The rainfall soaks him, and the words pour out—about how he’d sometimes heard the caravans and travelers in Mos Espa talking about the strange water that falls from the sky, how it doesn’t even need to be harvested by moisture farmers. How it just comes down and coats the world and everything in it, without a soul knowing when or why or how. It just comes, and comes, and comes, and it doesn’t stop.

And now, as it comes, Anakin dances.

“Woooooo hoo!”

He runs a few paces down the Temple stairs—as though he can somehow get closer to it, let the storm engulf him more fully. When he stops, he lifts his face to the sky as the droplets coat his skin, and he smiles.

Obi-Wan watches. And as he stands there, dry and warm in his self-made shelter, he realizes it:

_Perhaps this isn’t the only storm I’m hiding from._

And he knows, then. He knows that sometimes the storm is around you and sometimes it’s within you. That sometimes all you can hear is thunder and sometimes only your heartbeat, and sometimes you can’t tell the difference. And maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. A storm is a storm, and when it finds you, you can do one of two things—you can take shelter.

Or you can do this.

Obi-Wan steps forward. Drops the Force’s umbrella.

He lets the rainfall come.

Anakin cheers as Obi-Wan’s cloak grows soaked, as his hair falls flat and damp, and he laughs when Obi-Wan pushes it out of his eyes. And then he’s taking Obi-Wan by the wrists—pulling him forward, downward, the stairs turning to air beneath their feet. They are in the storm, and they are the storm. Their laughter indistinguishable from lightening. Thunder and heartbeats one and the same.

Obi-Wan lets Anakin pull him through the streets of Coruscant, where the city lights and the lightening merge—never mind the fact that the boy hasn’t a clue where he’s going, and they’re not even headed in the general direction of Dex’s. Never mind the fact that people are running for indoors, pulling their hoods up or closing their windows lest the rain come inside.

But for the first time, Obi-Wan doesn’t do the same. He’d spent so long building his shelter, he’s forgotten how it feels to be washed away.

Thunder booms. Anakin looks back, wiping the water from his eyes with the hand that isn’t holding Obi-Wan’s, and he smiles.

And when Obi-Wan smiles back, it feels real.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> Come gush about star wars with me on tumblr: [ kckenobi ](https://kckenobi.tumblr.com/)


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